http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1013-26.htm
Published on Friday, October 13, 2006 by Truthdig
Dear Leaders
by Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas -
I know next to nothing about North Korea, but I know how to find out.
People who do know the weird country have been worrying about it in print
for six years now. (See articles in The New York Review of Books.) Eric
Alterman picked this bit up in "The Book on Bush": "The tone of [Colin]
Powell's tenure was set early in the administration, when he announced that
he planned 'to pick up where the Clinton administration had left off' in
trying to secure the peace between North and South Korea, while negotiating
with the North to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weaponry. The president
not only repudiated his secretary of state in public, announcing, 'We're not
certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements,'
he did so during a joint appearance with South Korean President (and Nobel
laureate for peace for his own efforts with the North) Kim Dae-Jung, thereby
humiliating his honored guest, as well.
"A day later, Powell backpedaled. 'The president forcefully made the
point that we are undertaking a full review of our relationship with North
Korea,' Powell said. 'There was some suggestion that imminent negotiations
are about to begin-that is not the case.' "
This was pre-9/11, when Bush's entire foreign policy consisted in not
doing whatever Clinton had done, and vice versa. Also from "The Book on
Bush": "As former Ambassadors Morton Abramowitz and James Laney warned at
the moment of Bush's carelessly worded 'Axis of Evil' address, 'Besides
putting another knife in the diminishing South Korean president,' the speech
would likely cause 'dangerous escalatory consequences, (including) ...
renewed tensions on the peninsula and continued export of missiles to the
Mideast.' ... North Korea called the Bush bluff, and the result, notes
(Washington Post) columnist Richard Cohen, was 'a stumble, a fumble, an
error compounded by a blooper ... as appalling a display of diplomacy as
anyone has seen since a shooting in Sarajevo turned into World War I.' "
Remember Bush's diplomatic interview with Bob Woodward in which he
said, "I loathe Kim Jong Il!" Waving his finger, he added, "I've got a
visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people." Bush also
said he wanted to "topple him" and called him a "pygmy." How old were you
when you learned not to antagonize and infuriate the local crazy bully?
Always a top diplomat. But I warn you, when Bush makes reference of
this, as in "my gut tells me," we are in big trouble. By any measure, North
Korea continued to be more dangerous than Iraq.
I don't see how this mess can be blamed on anyone but Bush, but I
notice that a few Republicans have dragged out the shade of Bill Clinton
because he tried to deal with North Korea. I would have thought there wasn't
much water left in that bogeyman, but I guess he is the straw man for all
seasons among Republicans. Why doesn't someone on Fox News ask him about it?
Meanwhile, our fiendishly clever president has dragged his daddy's old
family consigliore, James Baker, out of retirement to think of something to
do about Iraq. A three-part partition is mentioned. History Professor Juan
Cole on his blog explains why that's a disaster, but I suspect that's where
the poor Iraqis end up anyway, followed by war with Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Molly Ivins is from Houston, Texas, graduated from Smith College in
1966, attended Columbia University's School of Journalism and studied for a
year at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris. Her first newspaper
job was at the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. She rapidly
worked her way up to the position of sewer editor, where she wrote a number
of gripping articles about street closings. She went on to the Minneapolis
Tribune and was the first woman police reporter in that city. In the late
1960s, she was assigned to a beat called "Movements for Social Change,"
covering angry blacks, radical students, uppity women and a motley
assortment of other misfits and troublemakers. Ivins counts as her highest
honors that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her, and
that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M.
***
Today's Los Angeles Times Opinion Section:
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006
Letters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bush Policies Triggered North Korean Nuke
Re: "North Korea Declares Nuclear Test," October 9th
Suppose you were North Korea and President Bush put you into his
"axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran. You saw him invade Iraq, kill tens
of thousands of its people and change its government. Then he began
following the same pattern with Iran. Meanwhile, Bush refused to talk to
you directly about your nuclear program. Wouldn't you develop and test a
nuke to defend yourself? Thanks to Bush's dangerous policies, the
chickens have come home to roost.
MARJORIE COHN
President-elect, National Lawyers Guild, San Diego
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is clear that the Bush administration has no desire to find a
diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear testing. President Bush has
ignored repeated offers by North Korea to hold talks about its nuclear
policy. What hypocrisy! The U.S. demands that North Korea stop testing
while we continue to expand our arsenal of thousands of nukes. North
Korea is the world's eighth declared nuclear power, not the first. The
only way to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons is for the U.S. to
initiate global nuclear disarmament. That means banning all nuclear
weapons in all countries.
TANJA WINTER
La Jolla
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
North Korea's Nuclear Policy Is Not Irrational At All
By Dan Plesch, The Guardian - 10-09-2006
North Korea's nuclear test is only the latest failure of the west's
proliferation policy. And it demonstrates the need to return to the
proven methods of multilateral disarmament. Far from being crazy, the
North Korean policy is quite rational. Faced with a US government that
believes the communist regime should be removed from the map, the North
Koreans pressed ahead with building a deterrent. George Bush stopped the
oil supplies to North Korea that had been part of a framework to end its
nuclear program previously agreed with Bill Clinton. Bush had already
threatened pre-emptive war - Iraq-style - against a regime he dubbed as
belonging to the axis of evil.
The background to North Korea's test is that, since the end of the cold
war, the nuclear states have tried to impose a double standard, hanging
on to nuclear weapons for themselves and their friends while denying
them to others. Like alcoholics condemning teenage drinking, the nuclear
powers have made the spread of nuclear weapons the terror of our age,
distracting attention from their own behavior. Western leaders refuse to
accept that our own actions encourage others to follow suit.
North Korea's action has now increased the number of nuclear weapon
states to nine. Since 1998 India, Pakistan and now North Korea have
joined America, China, France, Russia, Israel and the UK.
The domino effect is all too obvious. Britain wants nuclear weapons so
long as the French do. India said it would build one if there were no
multilateral disarmament talks. Pakistan followed rapidly. In Iran and
the Arab world Israel's bomb had always been an incentive to join in.
But for my Iranian friends, waking up to a Pakistani bomb can be
compared to living in a non-nuclear Britain and waking up to find
Belgium had tested a nuclear weapon.
East Asia is unlikely to be different. In 2002 Japan's then chief
cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, told reporters that "depending on the
world situation, circumstances and public opinion could require Japan to
possess nuclear weapons". The deputy cabinet secretary at the time,
Shinzo Abe - now Japan's prime minister - said afterwards that it would
be acceptable for Japan to develop small, strategic nuclear weapons.
It was not supposed to be like this. At the end of the cold war,
disarmament treaties were being signed, and in 1996 the big powers
finally agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons for the first time since
1945. The public, the pressure groups and the media all breathed a great
sigh of relief and forgot about the bomb. Everyone thought that with the
Soviet Union gone, multilateral disarmament would accelerate.
But with public attention elsewhere, the Dr Strangeloves in Washington,
Moscow and Paris stopped the disarmament process and invented new ideas
requiring new nuclear weapons. A decade ago, Clinton's Pentagon placed
"non-state actors" (ie terrorists) on the list of likely targets for US
nuclear weapons. Now all the established nuclear states are building new
nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration made things worse. First, it rejected the policy
of controlling armaments through treaties, which had been followed by
previous presidents since 1918. Second, it proposed to use military -
even nuclear - force in a pre-emptive attack to prevent proliferation.
This policy was used as a pretext for attacking Iraq and may now be used
on either Iran or North Korea. More pre-emptive war will produce
suffering and chaos, while nothing is done about India, Israel and
Pakistan. So we are left with a policy of vigilante bravado for which we
have sacrificed the proven methods of weapons control.
Fortunately, there is a realistic option. Max Kampelman, Ronald Reagan's
nuclear negotiator, has proposed that Washington's top priority should
be the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction on earth,
including those possessed by the US. At the ongoing disarmament meetings
at the UN, the vast majority of nations argue for a phased process to
achieve this goal. They can point to the success of the UN inspectors in
Iraq as proof that international inspection can work, even in the
toughest cases. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that removed the
missiles from Greenham is an example of an agreement no one thought
possible that worked completely. This, and other legacies from the cold
war, can and should be applied globally.
A group of Britain's closest allies, including South Africa and Ireland,
are trying to broker a deal on global disarmament. Tragically, Britain
won't be helping. Political parties and the media are deaf to these
initiatives. The three main parties all follow more or less the US
approach. They know that no US government will lease the UK a successor
to Trident if London steps out of line on nuclear weapons policy. The
media almost never report on UN disarmament debates. Disarmament has
become the word that dare not be said in polite society.
Do we have to wait for another pre-emptive war or until the Japanese go
nuclear before the British political class comes to realize that there
can be a soft landing from these nuclear crises?
. Dan Plesch, a fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and
Keele University, is the author of The Beauty Queen's Guide to World
Peace
www.danplesch.net
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